tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-77663626582772409012009-10-17T14:45:50.794-07:00Fleet Combat Online is the future home of the online multi-player startship combat simulator. Watch this space for updates on the live launch.Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.comBlogger60125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-12272681496106735332009-08-06T10:03:00.000-07:002009-08-06T11:09:37.602-07:00

Fleet Combat Online has reached 500 users!OK, that's not a huge number, but still not too bad for a game that has done essentially no advertising. We average between one and two people signing up per day (1.43 to be exact). The game started in February of 2008.So in honor of the occasion, here are some more statistics about the game:61% of our traffic comes from Google searches13% is direct

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-91929637518124704022009-05-01T15:00:00.001-07:002009-05-01T15:08:22.099-07:00

A very early feature request in Fleet Combat Online was for ship collisions. Another request some time later was to be able to battle on different "maps" that have obstacles on them such as asteroids and planets, etc.Both of these features have just been deployed. When you create a game now, you have the option of selecting a map to play on. As of now, there are only two maps, but I will be

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-602842439267058212009-04-08T14:31:00.001-07:002009-04-08T14:39:28.522-07:00

I have updated the way that beam weapons work to make them more powerful at longer range, and less powerful at short range. Up to now, the power delivered by a beam weapon has decreased linearly with range. Using a set charge amount, firing at a target twice as far away would do half the damage. This worked ok, but it made beams very deadly at point blank range and almost useless at anything

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-41162429810384993892009-03-10T15:48:00.001-07:002009-03-10T15:50:15.219-07:00

I think, finally we are all moved.Everything was all set for me to just switch the domain name over (so that www.fleetcombat.com pointed to the new address) and get the latest copy of the data onto the new server. Should have been about two hours of downtime.Then in the middle of doing that I found out that the new hosting company had somehow deleted all the permissions settings I had made and

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-44142405548242572412009-03-06T10:01:00.000-08:002009-03-06T10:09:39.664-08:00

Well, not necessarily today, but sometime this weekend, Fleet Combat Online will be moving to a new hosting provider.The host it is on now is pretty expensive ($25 a month) and my account there is running out of disk space fast. They charge an outrageous amount for added disk space. So I found a much cheaper host ($10 a month) that offers more than four times the disk space.I have been moving

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-26867679599615661442009-02-27T14:16:00.001-08:002009-02-27T14:21:04.115-08:00

There is a new feature to add some variety to the game play. Today I have deployed "Advanced Game Rules". When you are creating a battle, you will see a button that says "Show Advanced Rules" on the 2nd page of the "create a battle" wizard process. If you click that, a panel will show up that has a whole bunch of custom rules you can apply to the game. These rules fall into three categories:

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-55476768775950070912009-02-10T13:09:00.001-08:002009-02-10T13:11:16.677-08:00

The site has been down for most of yesterday and today. Even when it was up earlier today, it wasn't really working right.My hosting company changed something about how file permissions were handled, so the application could not write to the file system. This means it could not save any changes to the game data like orders.So, if you have been unable to play for the last 24 hours or so, thats

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-76162519149864938102008-12-12T16:31:00.000-08:002008-12-12T16:44:11.279-08:00

I need more feedback. There are only a small handful of players who participate in the online forum, and they have been very helpful. But I need more information than that. Here are some interesting stats:354 battles have been played so far. (not counting stalled games that were deleted)There are 171 players who have signed up and "activated" their accounts.148 of them have only joined one

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-81084747181610292982008-12-10T13:04:00.000-08:002008-12-10T14:13:53.852-08:00

The new AI is finally here!It was a lot of work to integrate a whole new AI platform, and I was never sure that I would end up with anything useful, but I am pretty happy with it. The AI itself is only a little bit smarter right now than the old one. But the important thing is that the AI is now completely adjustable and extensible. Each AI player can have its own strategy and tactics and

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-80234963160661059502008-11-20T10:39:00.000-08:002008-11-20T10:54:01.968-08:00

There haven't been any updates lately, I know. But this doesn't mean I haven't been busy. I did update most of the pages in the wiki, and I have been hard at work on a completely new AI system.When I first launched the game, I just needed to get some kind of AI system in place so that people could test the game and play it whenever they wanted instead of having to wait for another real person

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-89354460388867368022008-10-28T14:41:00.000-07:002008-10-28T15:01:53.443-07:00

Formations are now live! I had deployed the formation manager for testing a few weeks ago, which allowed you to create and play around with formations. But you could not actually use them in battle.Now, the missing pieces are in place and you can actually enter battle using those formations. I think this will add a bit of dynamic as well as some "coolness" factor to battles. When you join a

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-20108289697868946122008-10-01T15:28:00.000-07:002008-10-01T15:34:12.642-07:00

As you may have seen from my last post giving you a sneak peak at a new feature, Fleet Combat Online now (almost) has custom fleet formations. On the left nav bar of the site when you are logged in, you will see "My Formations". This link takes you to a page where you can manage your formations.Formations are not fully functional yet. You can create and edit formations, but you cannot yet use

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-58971847597926890582008-09-22T14:37:00.001-07:002008-09-22T14:43:14.794-07:00

Here is a sneak preview screenshot of what I have been working on lately for the game:It is a "formation manager". Currently, when you start a game, your ships are all positioned in a "line abreast" formation and you can control the direction they all face, but that is about it. With this tool, you will be able to create as many formations as you like and save them to your user profile. You

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-83093912148571004892008-09-05T10:20:00.001-07:002008-09-05T10:30:47.438-07:00

I have just deployed a few small changes to the game logic. The main change is to the FTL jump drives. Players have been using them a little too much making battles hard to resolve. One player jumps so the other player immediately jumps to keep from getting caught in a vulnerable position. This goes on forever and no one gains an advantage.So, the following changes have been made to FTL

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-23949334996469554032008-07-25T10:47:00.000-07:002008-07-25T10:53:55.766-07:00

Well the new Interstellar era has been out for a couple of weeks now and everything looks pretty stable. The log files don't show any significant errors and I haven't seen any bug reports. So either that means the code is fairly clean or people just aren't playing :)Along those lines, I am now going to try to address the issue of players. Up to now I have been purposely not trying to gather a

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-30842667060958678132008-07-11T23:11:00.000-07:002008-07-11T23:23:54.917-07:00

Ok boys and girls (right, who are we kidding). The interstellar era has been deployed. I did a little last minute testing and calibration of the weapon strengths and everything seemed cool, so I just went for it.You can now create interstellar era games!Here are some highlights:1) Carriers and Fighters! They're pretty fun to use. But when you add the carrier to your fleet, it is empty. You have

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-53631149884038934192008-07-01T19:07:00.000-07:002008-07-01T19:12:23.496-07:00

I know things have been a little quiet around here but that is just because I have been focusing on getting the Interstellar era deployed. Once that is deployed, I will be making a lot more frequent small changes to enhance the game and the website.The coding on the Interstellar is done. All the new subsystems and ship types work.Now I am in the middle of creating a load of new ship types. To be

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-15820531454934102972008-06-15T16:26:00.001-07:002008-06-15T17:24:07.208-07:00

I am still working on the new technologies for the Interstellar era of the game. But I thought I would post some screenshots to show the progress. Here is a sequence of shots showing an attack run by two fighter wings against some enemy ships.(Click the images to see larger versions)In the first frame, I have launched two fighter wings (Beta wing and Gamma wing) from the carrier. Each "wing"

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-20465514704357843512008-05-29T15:49:00.000-07:002008-05-29T16:05:02.958-07:00

I have officially started work on the Interstellar Era of Fleet Combat. This will take a while as many new technologies are needed. But the first one I am working on is carriers and fighters.In real naval combat, fighters completely changed the game. Battleships were now irrelevant -- you couldn't get close enough to a carrier group to hit it with your big guns before the fighters and bombers

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-59398363300773070172008-05-21T15:54:00.000-07:002008-05-21T15:58:38.670-07:00

The new development server is built and up and running. As proof, I have just deployed a small bug fix: the game client was displaying "No Deadline" in every game even if it did have a turn deadline.This was because a while back I forgot that the client needed that info so I marked the deadline information so the server would not send it to the client. I have re-enabled this so now it should

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-20573205164793230262008-05-20T10:16:00.001-07:002008-05-20T10:19:39.911-07:00

Just a quick update about the state of my development server. I ordered parts for a new server over the weekend and they all arrive today. So I will be able to build the server tonight and get at least most of the software installed. Hopefully Vista won't give me any trouble and I will be able to easily transfer all the data from the old hard drive without losing anything.So if all goes well,

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-44517312005152766802008-05-16T21:18:00.001-07:002008-05-16T21:33:11.932-07:00

So there have been a few cases lately of old bugs in the game that I had fixed resurfacing. I could look at the code and see bits of it that I had corrected that had somehow reverted to an older version before the fix.I have encountered this sort of thing before. It is usually a problem with Visual Studio and/or Visual Source Safe. Visual Studio is what I use to develop the game, and Visual

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-87888536320376868462008-05-14T16:37:00.000-07:002008-05-14T16:45:18.366-07:00

Fleet Combat Online now has an online player ranking ladder. This is based on the ELO scoring system which is commonly used for Chess, "Go", StarCraft and lots of two player games both online and off. This system uses a pretty well established mathematical formula which gives a weighted amount of points based on the existing skill rating of each player participating in a match. You can see the

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-24741534768233734742008-05-02T18:23:00.000-07:002008-05-02T18:47:27.786-07:00

Wow, its been a month since I posted here. Well, I have not been inactive at all, I have been working on some big changes to the game. So without further delay, here is the list of updates:The game now supports Directed Energy Weapons -- Lasers! This was a big development effort, but it is one step to ushering the later "eras" as energy weapons will feature prominently in later times. Though

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-87706215406570756542008-04-06T23:55:00.001-07:002008-04-06T23:55:58.660-07:00

I have deployed the following changes (mostly bug fixes):Bugs fixed:1) AI players not firing all of their weapons when they have the opportunity.2) An unhandled error in the game client when assigning repair teams to fix a subsystem3) An unhandled error in the game client when deploying a decoy4) When a ship exploded, there was no explosion drawn in the game client (there was still an explosion

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